Early Evening Budget Update: Where things stand.

1. The House Appropriations Committee approved the Fiscal Code bill, positioning it for a vote by the full House on Saturday.

Included within the bill, raising some eyebrows, was language imposing a six-year drilling moratorium in something called the South Newark Basin.

This was not, as we had supposed, a piece of plumbing equipment in Billy Joel's linen closet, but a new natural gas formation that runs from New York and New Jersey into Bucks County.

The drilling moratorium would run until 2018 and require the state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to do a study of the new gas formation.

"It's a brand new formation and we don't know anything about the extent of it," said Rep. Scott Petri, R-Bucks, whose district is in the basin. "We can't have anyone drilling until we know what it is."

The move raised eyebrows among environmentalists, the language is little more than an attempt to get Bucks County exempted from the local preemption language in Act 13, the state's new Marcellus shale drilling law. Southeastern lawmakers are getting pushback from constituents on the law, they say.

"Apparently Act 13 is so unpopular that some legislators in Bucks County who voted for it, now want their own districts exempted from its draconian provisions," Myron Arnowit, of the group Clean Water Action said in a statement e-mailed to Capitol scribes. "These secretive dealings are just the kind of politics as usual approach to legislation that infuriates most voters."

2. The Senate began debate on a number of code bills this evening. A vote was expected by 7:30 p.m.on the provisions below:

The Tax Code:. Embedded in the document was the $1.65 billion, 25-year tax credit for Royal Dutch Shell PLC that’s intended to encourage the company to build a new natural gas processing plant in western Pennsylvania.

The credit takes effect on Dec. 31, 2016 and runs through Dec. 31, 2044. It requires a minimum investment of $1 billion and allows companies to claim a credit of up to 20 percent if it creates 2,500 manufacturing jobs. The bill also requires the companies (Schnell) to file a report in 10 years on the number of jobs it creates.

“The tax credit means jobs for the people of my district and for the people of Pennsylvania,” said Sen. Elder Vogel, R-Beaver, whose district would include the potential processing plant. “We have a once-in-lifetime opportunity to transform Pennsylvania into the manufacturing powerhouse it once was.”

The Welfare Code: The Senate was to vote on language overhauling the way the state pays for county-run human services program. Compromise language offered by Senate Public Health and Welfare Chairwoman Patricia Vance, R-Cumberland, would allow 20 counties to enroll in a pilot program sending them the money in the form of a block grant.

Though the seven accounts being rolled into the new block grant are set for a 10 percent cut in funding, the Corbett administration has argued that the approach will give county leaders greater flexibility to spend the money. Service-providers say the approach will result in different groups competing against each other for shrinking state dollars.

Senators also announced a one-month extension to the end of the state’s cash general-assistance program. The program, originally set to end July 1, provides $200 montly cash payments to about 70,000 Pennsylvanians.

The School Code: Senators were to vote on changes to the state’s school code that would place school superintendents’ contracts under the auspices of Pennsylvania’s Right-to-Know Law. It would also implement new evaluation standards for public school teachers.

Under the terms of the bill, a variety of student performance measures would comprise 50 percent of an educator’s overall rating.